Today has been fearfully hot but less humid than yesterday hence more endurable. Yesterday was intolerable. The official temperature was only 100 degrees, however, with a minimum of 68 degrees!!

We had a nice surprise Saturday night by young Linus who called at 9:30. He left tonight and leaves Tuesday for Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. I have given him your New York address and he will try to see you. He is to go to school there for a short period and then overseas. He thinks he won't have another time at home. He was sorry not to see you but brought a nice compliment for you. His friends Brooks had been home to dinner at which the chief engineer of the Southern California Gas Company who had known you at Cal Tech said you were the most brilliant man he'd ever seen! Hmmmmmm!

Linus decapitated two red roosters last night. We dry plucked them-a bit longer but results are better. I fried them today. They were surely delicious! I read somewhere that fowl should be dry plucked and kept out of water to be at its best. I believe it. I made fresh rolls, potato salad and a devils food cake. So we had really a feast on our front porch.

Yesterday Betty and Albert came. I believe they are a bit at odds with one another and I don't think she wants me to come down to the beach! I'm going to let the children ask George tomorrow and if he says it is all right I'm going to not let Betty spoil the children's and my plans. I f they would only let us stay by ourselves! We'd like it better and it would certainly be cheaper; but there is the difficulty. Albert likes to eat with us, poor, simple fellow!

I'll take the Claus Mann to Mrs. Wilson tomorrow. [The last line was crossed out with pencil except for "Claus Mann" which was circled with an arrow down to the word "he" in the next sentence which is also crossed out] I think he is an intelligent person and perhaps a better writer than the average Guggenheim Fellow.

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He is trying desperately to have a message to tell and poor fellow, he hasn't any and if he did, he might say it very well. The same thing is wrong with him that is wrong with all Germans and Germany--a deep and complete conviction that he is superior and that his is the fundamental conception.

Actually, he is pretty trivial and considering his great opportunities a pretty inspired dish. Did you notice he hobnobs with Murial Rukeyser and that great authoress Carson McCullers? [this last sentence is also crossed off in pencil.]

The Pick Lecture for Nu Kappa Nu Medical Fraternity, University of Chicago, September 3, 1945

Mr. President, gentlemen: I thank you for the honor of allowing me to present the Pick Lecture.

First, let me say a few words about why I, a chemist, am interested in medical research, and in particular in serology. There are two reasons: First, for many years I have worked on the structure of molecules, simple and then more and more complex; and antibodies provide a most interesting structural problem. Second, I have, as everyone has, a natural, human interest in disease - an interest as old as thinking man - Shakespeare, in a play about the Trojan war, had Thersites mention to Patrodus, "...the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, lime-kilus i' the palm, incurable bone-aches, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter..."

Some of these ailments no longer give us great concern. There has been marvelous progress during the last century: deaths from scarlet fever are in 20 years down 92%, from whooping cough 74%, from measles 91%; osteomyelitis and even bacterial endocarditis are responding to treatment with penicillin.

The consequences of the great success in the treatment of infectious diseases is that the degenerative diseases have become more important. 45% of all deaths are now due to cardiovascular-renal disease; infectious diseases are still second, with cancer third - and much human suffering is caused by the common cold, arthritis, asthma and hay fever, peptic ulcer.

But, if the expectancy of life has increased to 63, why should we not be satisfied? Well, as Thomas Browne said 300 years ago, "The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying."

There are two ways of carrying on medical research. First, direct attack on a particular disease, planned with the use of the information at hand. Second, the fundamental study of the human body, bacteria and viruses and other carriers of disease, and their interaction with each other and with their environment, to obtain new insight, clues that point the way for progress. Our serological studies are in this class.

Dr. Karl Landsteiner introduced me to serology... Perhaps he remembered what Ehrlich had said about serology and structural chemistry (Quote it) (Here discussion of structure of antibodies in relation to specificity and precipitation - 15 slides; anaphylaxis, complement, etc. ignored because I don't understand them. Acknowledgement to Campbell, Pressman and others.)

There is still very much that we do not know - even the gross shapes of globulin molecules and other protein molecules except the viruses. We can hope that the electron microscope will solve the riddles of life that are hidden in the 10 Å to 100 Å region.

And now, young men, let me stop my talk with a word of advice to you - be bold, not timid; do your daily work well, and in addition be ever on the watch for the clear ring around the spot of mold on the cultured late, for the surprising regression of the carcinoma in the patient with erysipelas, for the electronic instrument which makes possible a new operation; do not hold back because some one else knows more chemistry than you do, or has had more clinical experience - remember that you are unique, that no one else has the same combination of inherited characteristics, training, and experience that you have, no one else will see the same patient from the same point of view; remember that the world is moving forward, and be ready to seize the chance when Fate offers, and then make your contribution.

Telegram from Dr. Reuben Wood, Maryland Research Laboratories to LP RE: Says he was offered and accepted the job at George Washington, thanks him for wiring, and says he probably will not make it to California until June. [Telegram from LP to Wood August 30, 1945, letter from LP to Wood September 13, 1945] [Filed under LP Correspondence: 438.7]